He grabbed me and pulled me to him, crushing his arms around me, trying to hug the pain from us both. The tears slipped down my cheeks.
“And that’s when you tried to call Sandy… to tell me…” There I was, in his arms, and he still didn’t want to believe that I had really wanted him. I couldn’t blame him. We’d screwed this up so many times before.
“To tell you I loved you, too.”
He let out a breath that was part relief, part agony. We were both in tears, but he still didn’t know the whole story.
“You haven’t heard the worst of it,” I said into his shirt.
“It gets worse?”
“Exponentially.”
“I don’t know if I can take it.”
“Well,” I started in, hesitantly, “I wasn’t exactly thinking rationally at the time. I mean, I moved back here but-”
“I see that.”
“It uh… it wasn’t really part of the plan.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“Well, I had already packed everything. I had no job and didn’t have much of a choice. The landlord already had new tenants lined up. I thought… I figured I’d be moving somewhere new. Hopefully, with a roommate.”
I turned in his arms to face him, but wimped out and kept my face buried against his chest instead. My eyes were gathering tears again and my voice had begun to shake. “I’d rolled the dice and I lost. I’d gambled on you. I was coming to California to be with you.”
“You came out to California? You were there?”
“No, I… I never made it.”
His hand stilled. “Wait. When was this?”
“A few days after I got your present.”
I raised my head to gauge his reaction and could see the understanding dawning across his features, putting the timeline into perspective, realizing what prevented me from coming to find him. But the martyr in him wanted to hear me say it. “What… stopped you?”
“I’d have to say it was the fact that you’d just announced your engagement to Jenna Barnes.” I put a hand against his neck, buried my face in his chest again, and added, “When she got out of that limo… God, Trip. I thought I’d die. It killed me.”
He wrapped his arms around me tightly, and I could feel his jaw clenching under my palm. “You loved me.”
“I did. I do.”
“You should have come anyway.”
“Ha! That would have gone over well.”
“You could have saved me from myself.”
I tensed at his words. I’d suffered years of guilt for his downward decline. And there he was, confirming that it was my fault.
Trip felt me stiffen in his arms and pulled back. His brows were furrowed in confusion. He had no idea what he’d just said.
“Trip… I’ve completely beaten myself up over that very thing. How could you—”
“Oh my God. No. Babe, no one could have saved me from the bottle, let’s just get that straight right now. Yes, I fell hard after you, but it was only the excuse I needed. I was sinking on my own long before you destroyed me. Those were my choices, and mine alone. If you don’t hear anything else I say, hear that.” He paused and turned my face to him, his eyes solemn. “My choices, Lay. Don’t you dare put that burden on yourself.” He held my gaze until I nodded slightly, relenting. He gave me a brief smile, then continued. “I meant you could have saved me from the years of pining for you. All these years we wasted, loving each other and not doing anything about it. It was supposed to be a joke.”
“Good one.”
“It was a bad one. I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“Why didn’t I what?”
“Why didn’t you come for me? If you loved me so much… why—”
“Lay. I was stuck in a bottle for years. Even after I broke it off with Jenna and cleaned up… I never thought I could contact you. I thought I’d made it very clear that I was in love with you, and you just… turned me down. I thought I was saving face by announcing my engagement, running in another direction, thinking it would ease my pain. It didn’t. I was trying to destroy you, and I hoped that I did. Wanted to hurt you even if I wasn’t sure you’d even care. I couldn’t very well just call you up to say ‘hey’ after that. Look at it from my side. Why would I have thought you even wanted me to? I always thought you’d chosen the other guy. I figured I was long out of the running.”
“But I didn’t choose him. I was in love with you.” That earned me a sweet kiss against my knuckles and a shy smile across that gorgeous mug. There we were, together again. I couldn’t even imagine what my life would be like had I actually married Devin. I couldn’t believe I almost did. I couldn’t believe Trip thought that I actually had. “How did you find out I didn’t marry him?”
“I have my sources.”
I looked at him, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to continue.
“I had Sandy do some digging last week. The first thing I did when I found out my father died was to ask her to find you. Turns out, she’d been keeping tabs on you all these years. She told me about your books. More importantly, told me you were single.”
“So, this whole time, you thought that I…”